One heroic minute at a time

Christina Capecchi

1/12/16

Oprah Winfrey has joined Weight Watchers, which means she is
not only a card-carrying, point-counting member of the
weight-loss club, she is also a part owner. That's how you do
it when you're Oprah: You go big or you don't bother.

For the 61-year-old billionaire, news of her involvement in
the company and her investment of a 10-percent stake yielded
a big pay day: Weight Watchers' stock doubled, netting Oprah
about $45 million in one day.

She reported her progress in the January issue of O: The
Oprah Magazine, appearing on the cover in her most
stripped-down look yet - barefoot in taupe spandex, a purple
shawl and a nude lip. "I wanted a plan for life, and here it
was in the form of Weight Watchers," Oprah wrote in her
back-page column. She's lost 26 pounds since last August and
gained a powerful sense of well-being.

What strikes me about her slickly marketed invitation to join
Weight Watchers is how tempting it is, how eagerly many of us
are waiting for an entry point into the future we've always
imagined. We're paralyzed by the mounting gap between
dreaming and doing, wondering what to do with 2016 in light
of our Catholic faith and our packed calendars.

Bert Hernandez recognized his chance to turn things around
when he spotted a random tweet one Monday last August. The
40-year-old youth minister from San Antonio already had
determined that getting on top of things, for him, would mean
rising early like Teddy Roosevelt. He wanted to exercise
daily, clean his house and strengthen his prayer life.

For several months Bert had been setting his alarm at 4 a.m.,
with a success rate he could count on one hand. Then came
Leah Darrow's tweet inviting people to participate in the
#HeroicMinuteChallenge, a hashtag the popular Catholic
speaker had borrowed from St. Josemaría
Escrivá, who wrote: "Conquer yourself each day from
the very first moment, getting up on the dot, at a fixed
time, without yielding a single minute to laziness. If, with
God's help, you conquer yourself, you will be well ahead for
the rest of the day. The heroic minute: here you
have a mortification that strengthens your will and does no
harm to your body."

Bert saw Leah's movement as a club he could be part of,
informed by Catholicism and driven by accountability, so he
tweeted, "I accept the #HeroicMinuteChallenge" and made his
pledge public. The next day, at 4 a.m., he got out of bed and
scurried to the kitchen, turning on the stove to make coffee,
then retreating to the den to begin morning prayer. He
tweeted the evidence: a screenshot of his Office of Readings,
his iPhone at a 98 percent charge, his body, much lower.

By 6:30 a.m. he'd prayed the Liturgy of the Hours, run two
miles and showered.

The second morning was easier, and his Twitter picture showed
the hymn lyrics: "Morning has broken like the first morning."
He was doing it.

"My day always seemed better, starting that way," Bert told
me. "I definitely felt more peace." The added prayer time
also helped him discern a job change that has brought many
rewards.

The Heroic Minute Challenge wasn't easy for Leah either, but
the 36-year-old mom from St. Louis couldn't abandon others
who had signed on, and she wanted to offer real-time "likes"
of their early-morning evidence - snapshots of sunrises,
Scripture and coffee.

"The most important thing is getting my feet on the floor,"
Leah told me. "If I can move my feet out from under the
covers and they can touch the hardwood floor, half the
battle's done."

The path to holiness, Leah says, requires time management.
"We need to think about the time God has given us, and we
need to use it well."

Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights,
Minn., and the editor of SisterStory.org.